The Kelmscott goal was to publish beautiful books using 15th century methods-with handmade paper, hand-wrought engravings and custom types, on flat bed hand presses. William Morris, (1834-1896), the most prominent agent of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England, added publishing to his repertoire of handcrafted endeavors when he founded his Kelmscott Press in 1891. (Remember faster steam-driven presses and softer alloys in machine-cast metal type, also promoted the “kiss” aesthetic: print faster, less impression to minimize typeface wear.) Any visible debossing on the verso of these “perfect” sheets was not tolerated as show-through because it affected the words’ readability.Ī reaction to all of this faster, cheaper, flatter letterpress printing was afoot though in the late 19th century. For letterpress printing though, coatings on thinner machine-made wood pulp paper were meant to make the type “pop” and halftones/line engravings sharp with simply a kiss impression and no dampening. They added gloss, improved ink hold out, and whitened the sheet. Paper coatings like starch were introduced in ancient times to improve the surface characteristics and light reflectance of paper, but the automation of paper manufacture made coatings easier to apply on a large scale. The Fourdrinier papermaking machine received its first patent in 1801 in England. Wood-pulp paper for commercial use is a fairly recent development, dating from the 1800s. To achieve an even impression printers would often dampen the sheets, which in turn minimized impression on the verso. These hand-made papers were sometimes mottled in caliper and cockled. The linen and cotton rag paper of the first three centuries of Western printing was more forgiving in showing any bite. Printing on a wooden hand press pre-1800s was a somewhat different craft than what developed from the industrial revolution era and after. It was just something one had to see and feel. One explanation for this gap in the literature is perhaps that the appropriate amount of impression to apply in letterpress printing was tacitly taught in the press room-master to apprentice. There is a surprising dearth of information about what the optimal impression should have been to our printer forebears. Look at any number of historic printers’ manuals and you will notice a wealth of information about selecting type and paper, locking up forms, and even proof correction and orthography. The purpose of this article is to offer some historical background and guidelines for making decisions regarding impression depth. Impression depth today is an aesthetic choice made by the printer and client, however it is one that might have some lasting effects on the printer’s supply of vintage type. These prints exhibit a depression where the type or plate came in contact with the paper, and usually a noticeable raised surface on the sheets’ verso or reverse side. Conversely noted are the letterpress prints that exhibit bitten, punched, or heavily debossed impression. On one end of the spectrum is the traditionally-favored “kiss impression,” in which the printer applied just enough pressure to the type or printing plate to give adequate ink coverage on the paper, but the resulting print is devoid of any visual or tactile paper indentation on either side. In the letterpress market you will find products with varying depths of printing impression.
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